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This site is about Canadian postal First Day Cover collecting. The emphasis is on the collecting and cataloguing of Canadian First Day covers.

What a collector wants is a complete catalogue of all covers, detailing everything known from origins, to production including such things as quantities produced and current pricing. This does not exist and quite frankly, if it did there would not be as much interest in the hobby. What the hobbyist wants is a way to find out what is known and to add to the body of knowledge.

The purpose of this site is to present a single source for information about Canadian First Day Covers. This covers quite a bit of ground so it has been organized as follows.

You can follow what's new in Blogs in which members can post their own information about up-coming and recent events such as stamp shows, auctions or acquisitions. I will be using the admin blog to post information about changes to this site, although teasers should show up below.

Covers provides information about Canadian First Day Covers. This collection of articles, catalogues and links deal with covers and cachets and their makers and history.

Collecting contains the material regarding collecting and collections without reference to particular covers. This is the place we provide links to retailers, auctions sites and member offers.

Gallery has pictures of covers and images related to covers. Each member is provided with their own sub-album in the Members album, while more collaborative and organized collections are provided in their own albums. Weekly updates are provided in a list of Gallery Updates.

The four main articles in this issue examine different aspects of the products of four makers of Canadian FDC cachets ranging from the very familiar to the almost unknown. Leading off is George Basher’s exploration of the origins of Caneco cachets followed by Gary Dickinson’s review of the general purpose cachets produced by the U.S. firm Artopages for Canadian stamp issues.

The winter issue leads off with an article by faithful contributor John van der Ven which examines the day of issue cachets for Canadian stamps produced by the much-revered American artist Dorothy Knapp. Although the numbers were very small, the products were spectacular and most are shown here in full size. Later on in the issue John looks at the FDCs produced by the Canada Envelope Company for itself and other firms.

The call for submissions for this issue was answered by four members within 24 hours of my e-mail message to all of you. As a result we have eight items in the content of this issue. Please keep them coming!

In this issue, John van der Ven shares another of his cachet-maker discoveries in this issue with an article on J.W. Snowball of Toronto and Donald Leblanc continues his examination of Royal Visit covers, this time with several unearthed gems from Newfoundland. A first-person story about S.K.

This issue includes a greater than usual number of articles and short notes, and provides
additional information about two articles from previous issues (Regina cachet maker, Cole
Christmas Covers) and introductions to two previously unreported cachet makers (L.J.B. and
Albert Luiszer). There are also brief descriptions and scans sent to us by Ken Thibault, Peter
McCarthy, and Rob McGuinness. It’s a pleasure to receive such wide-ranging material for the

The articles in this issue feature three (or five, depending on how they`re counted) cachet makers,
all of whom were most active during the 1950s.

John van der Ven has done a masterful job in tracking and presenting the Canadian
cachets that were produced in small numbers by Portland, OR maker William Linto. Unlike most
cachet makers, Linto kept precise records of his products and catalogued them on his cacheted
envelopes.

Our autumn issue of First Impressions features the work of six cachet makers, all but one of whom produced only a small number of FDCs. Nova Scotian Cyrus Miller produced small numbers of hand-painted cachets in the 1960s, while W.C. Thorne’s hand-drawn covers appeared in an earlier decade. Vancouver Island resident Angus McMillan produced a raft of patriotic cachets related to WW II but his only FDC cachet came after peace had been achieved.

The three main articles in this issue look at three different cachet makers, two of whom had a very limited output of FDCs. Jan Pieter van der Ven reviews a set of colourful cachets addressed to a Joyce Green in Australia circa 1970 while Bob Vogel presents cachets produced by Walter Howe for the Provincial Flowers and Coats of Arms series in the mid-1960s.

This issue contains three articles and several short notices, all of which cover a broad range of topics that you may find to be of interest. The articles deal with FDCs for stamp #CE4 in response to a request from the late Bob Markovits for information about them, with the cachets produced by Robert Cole for Fred Harford, and with five stamp issues in consecutive years that highlighted the work of three private cachet makers and the official versions produced by CPO.

We are fortunate in this issue to have extracts from presentations made by two of our members at recent meetings and exhibits. Some highlights of Andrew Chung’s collection of errors, freaks, and oddities from Canada Post FDCs are shown along with selected pages from Brainard Fitzgerald’s exhibit of FDCs for the 1937 King George VI coronation issue.